Citigroup calls emergency board meeting

Source: CNNMONEY.COM


Citigroup Inc. board members are expected to hold an emergency meeting this weekend, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The paper, citing two people familiar with the matter, said it is not immediately clear what the board will address at the meeting. But the subject of further writedowns could come up, according to the report.


The world's largest bank lost nearly a quarter of its market value since October, when it reported third quarter earnings had dropped 57 percent due to mortgage defaults and the summer's credit scare, according to the Journal.

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/02/news/companies/citi_meeting/index.htm?postversion=2007110217

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Uh oh.

Say, "good-bye", Prince?

Not since the mid-70's has there been any gold standard in this country. Our paper money is basically just a notch above Monopoly play money. Truth is the Federal Reserves aren't part of the Gov. at all. They are compiled of several big banks, making decisions that look like they come from the gov. It's a scam, really. I plan to do more of a real piece on it soon.

Yes, please do.

But unlike whatever the libertarias would like to have you believe, the "gold standard" was a crook of shit too.

Banking by its definition relies on investment, and it has always created usury and money out of thin air. It was true in the 1600 when the first banks got started, as it is today. And the gold standard did diddly squat when speculation went out of hand in the late 20s.

The gold standard is another side issue, that does not address the overall problem. Fiat money, paper money, or gold backed money... for the most part is an illusion that transfers control from the people generating wealth, the workers, to the people who print the money.

It is time for people realizing that Capitalism has run its course, and start a new phase in our collective human evolution. Deciding how printed money should be banked is not the issue, in as much as it is akin to a drug addict deciding that his or her problems are not due to the drug itself but the quality of the drug.

I am not a religious guy, but at least that Jesus feller gave us a hint: The only people he got physical with were the usurers at the temple, i.e. the bankers. If the son of god, the prince of peace, loses his cool with that bunch of people... you know that there is something going on there.

Alas, it has been 2000 years since that, and we are even more controlled by the bankers. So as Jesus would say now a days if he was to return back: "You stupid fuckers...."

A bank came into being inside the uK whose main slogan was "Bank with us for complete privacy."

All sorts of people started to bank there. You never had to give a real name, or any government ID number, just a user name and a password.

Lots of people, especially those making money from enterprises that were not legal, enjoyed depositing funds there.

until one day, the bank was just <POOF> gone.

And further bad bad bad that so very many people don't understand the truth of your post.

It's only worth what bubble-inflated idiots think it's worth at any given moment.

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=5466369

This IS the Prince you're talking about, right ? LOL ! Oh, wait, Prince Charles !

How many lives have their illegal credit card industry ruined? When you look at the evil of this company, you realize this is not enough.

For about a year now there have been rumors of a couple of very large banks in potential risk of failure.

Or maybe this a replay of the emergency meetings of late 80s and early 90s, where banks in trouble made themselves available for acquisition. But Citibank is damned big--not what one would think of as acquisition material.

Or is this another Long Term Management Capital situation where a consortium of other banks will have to save them from failure?

They have skated on so much. The ice must just keep getting thinner and thinner.

When the banking sneezes the economy usually catches a full blown cold. When the largest bank loses 25% of its value in such a short time, the sneeze basically means that we are indeed in pneumonia territory.

There is an ancient saying that says something like "may you live in interesting times." It was told to me that it was not a saying, but actually a curse. And now after 7 yrs of Boosh, I seem to finally "get it."

Could be nothing more than a series of internal decisions, but a lot of bank collapses begin with an "emergency meeting" that doesn't sound terribly important, followed by a dividend suspension, write downs, chastisement from the bank regulators, etc...

Too true. :D

These banks--but expecially Chase and Citibank--must toss away millions a year on trying to extend credit to people who probably shouldn't have it to begin with.

So true.

And think of the poor trees wasted on that bullshit.

Maybe this is the reason ...

Charles Prince, the beleaguered chief executive of Citigroup Inc., is planning to resign at a board meeting on Sunday, according to people familiar with the situation.

The move caps a four-year tenure as CEO for Mr. Prince, a longtime lawyer who took over the reins from Sanford Weill, who built Citigroup into a financial colossus.

Just a few weeks ago, board members including Robert Rubin, the influential chairman of Citigroup's executive committee, expressed support for Mr. Prince and said that his job wasn't in jeopardy. "I think Chuck's going to be here for a lot of years," Mr. Rubin said in an interview last month. A spokeswoman for Citigroup declined to comment Friday.

Citigroup directors in recent months have publicly pledged their allegiance to Mr. Prince, and he received a key vote of confidence in early October from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the bank's biggest individual shareholder.

:dem: :kick:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119403363814780742.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo

But to call a meeting like this just sounds so reminiscent of more serious situations. And emotions rather than strategy are often the deciding factors in these meetings.

To be optimistic, maybe whatever is decided at this meeting will help to deflect greater losses and hardship for customers down the road.

Once the entire world knows about the deterioration of a bank, you can surmise that problems have existed for a long time which were concealed from the public at large.

Is there any blood connection between the two Princes'? Cousins, brothers, in laws etc etc

biggest individual shareholder."

So Saudi princes have to prop up US banks? What does that tell you about the state of the US economy and banking? Shades of BCCI here - money under the mattress time.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2193341

CNN: Saudi Prince Bandar Says 911 Could Have Been Avoided

I think in a sense banks are very different beasts, since they live on the concept of lending, investing and accruing deposits--and using those deposits to invest in the form of overnight funds.

This is not to say banks don't do stupid things, like lend to entities that are not credit-worthy.

When ENRON goes bust, only the shareholders are damaged. But when a major bank fails, the tremors are felt far and wide, and usually it causes a chain reaction of failures.

The huge gaping holes are not due because they gave away money and they can not collect.

The problem comes from the fact that they give away money they do not have to begin with. Basically, by saying that you want to borrow money, banks can make money out of thin air and give it to you. It is not their assets that they are giving away when you ask for money, but rather money they made up. Whether you can pay or not is not the problem. If you pay back, great the bank gets 'real money' that you slaved away to produce. If you don't pay it back, honestly it should not be a problem because that is money it never existed. The problem however comes from the domino effect that not existing money has!

I get irked when the ones being blamed are people with bad credit... and the real issue is the institutions making up money out of thin air. People have never wondered why the average family, in America right now, is among the most productive workers in the world... and yet we have to have multiple jobs, work long hours, produce, produce, produce, consume, consume, consume, all while sacrificing our family lives for almost nil benefits in the form of vacation, retirement and/or decent health care. The reason why we are in this, is due to the massive gaps these institutions have created, and which us the common peon have to work overtime in a vane attempt to fill it up.

The problem, is that these institutions are creating their own wealth at a faster rater than people can create the real wealth. And thus, the gap eventually catches up with the greed. Poor credit people are not the ones to blame in this mess....

When you are fighting a fire, you blame the pyromaniac that started the fire, not the poor people who have bad joints and can't carry those big buckets of water fast enough to fight the fire.

These pyromaniacs always count on the fire being controlled enough that it doesn't spread. However, reality sometimes has a tendency to get out of hand, when those winds speed up and the water dries up. However, usually the pyromaniac is long gone, and it is the poor people who had lived and cared for the forrest all their lives that get burned.

Reminds me of the day in a fine old Wall Street firm that I was taught "selling short." But I kept not understanding. "You sell what you don't own and then buy it for less? You sell what you don't own? Isn't that fraud?" And they kept telling me "No, it's not fraud" and explaining all over again.

A really good way to see selling short and long is to take out a loan from the bank and to use it to go gambling. You're gambling with someone else's money, which is the odd part. If you lose it all, you still have to pay the bank back, but now it's out of pocket. If you make out like a bandit at the casino, you pay the bank back out of your winnings and keep the rest for yourself.

Either way, it was someone else who staked you and they need to be paid back - gambling(selling) something you didn't own.

Anyhow, when you go to a bank and ask to borrow money. The bank can use your "word" on the fact that you will pay it back to in effect... create money out of thin air. In fact, I believe that for $1 you borrow, the bank can create $9... all just backed with your "word" on the fact that you will pay it back.

This is, the bank is printing money that they don't have, so it is not their money. They just own the printing machines, that is all. And in effect the only "reality" backing that money is the fact you are promising to pay it back.

A bank with $1000 in assets, could potentially create $10,000 of money that does not have any sort of real backing in value. When people pay back the loans, the bank made in effect $9,000 without moving a single finger.

The bank is not giving you money to gable or do whatever you want with it. As I think that was your attempt to tie bad credit into whatever example you were giving. The problem is not the gambling part, the problem is that money you were given was not the bank's to begin with.

That is the problem with usury, if you control the money supply you control the wealth, because in effect you are the creator of what is the measurement of wealth. The problem is when the house of cards starts crumbling down, like it is happening right now. And banks have created so much money out of thin air, that its effect is too strong for the economy to bear. Namely, the fact that the economy itself can not patch up the hole created by all the "virtual" money. This is the gap between real money and virtual money yet to be paid. Which is what I was referring to, sometimes the hole is just too big to be ever patched. And then is when things get interesting..

Part 1: Corrupt Banking System - Cartels Robbing the Public

and Citigroup sneaked their way into these pension funds too

The Federal Reserve will conjure up as many Bernanke bucks as needed to keep Citi afloat. We'll all pay for it with the ensuing currency devaluation.

I believe that CitiBank is bankrupt. It has no assets. It's all just....paper assets which are meaningless. I truly believe this is true. The bankers are just waiting for the Titanic to sink because there is nothing they can do.....except wait.

There were some inklings back in August that something was terribly, horribly wrong with the banking system. Some very savvy observers like Mike Whitney from Washington wrote some very interesting pieces on the crisis. He wrote, "the banks are broke, folks". That's why Northern Rock had a run on the bank, because it's broke.

Market-something to the effect the there are billions of dollars of worthless paper floating around.

They said it hasn't been this bad since the depression.

I've been trying to tell my husband this for months. Last night, he finally got it.

We are in for a VERY bumpy ride folks.

:scared:

So he got paid $150mil to run the company into the ground, cause $6bil+ of bad debt, put the stock back into the post-9/11 dark ages, and bring the company to the point of regulatory breakup? Nice work, if you can get it.

you're screwed now. You can't go bankrupt - the banks own your ass, your assets are gone, and you're out in the street. But if the banks have unserviceable debt, they just "write it down" with a federal bailout, the CEO resigns to go play somewhere else for a while, and the whole corrupt enterprise keeps on going.

Shows how much the government works for you these days.

Assuming an election goes forward, they lose their chief enabler, Bush, and may be reined in. One can hope. I worked at a large bank - largest in the state - from 1977 to 1987, and for the most part, they were ethical, took care of their employees and important contributors to the community. A couple years after I left, everything changed. They merged with an out of state bank, then that entity was acquired by Bank One, then Bank One was acquired by Chase. A bunch of people I knew lost their jobs, and of course Chase is one of the worst offenders out there - rip-off artists. I am paying off a loan I had with them (almost done - about two grand left) and will never do business with them again.

I like your avatar.

investors and employees left holding the (empty) bag

Citi and other investment banks do a lot of business in London. Many of the "off=the books" special purpose entities are set up in the Cayman Islands, Isle of Jersey, and similar British dependencies with minimal regulation.

The crash, if it comes, is likely to start with a failure in London, the hub of world-wide financial fraud.

I think London is the Achilles' Heel of the banking system.

Recall, about 2 months ago the Northern Rock bank had a run on its bank. Depositors were cued up around the building in a long line.

There was absolute PANIC behind the scenes. Northern Rock was in fact insolvent at that time, because of its subprime mortgages.

The Bank of England stepped in, and bailed out the bank. So the Bank of England is now the proud owner of a largely worthless portfolio of subprime mortgages. England is vulnerable right now.

So yeah I think you're right it could very well start in London.

I feel for them.

You know times are tough when the monied crowd has to stop and think how to get out of the mess they've created.

This smells like the S&L crisis.

I think that Poppy was way too generous to folks who made bad decisions, and those who fraudulently led them into it.

Of course, Neil had nothing to do with it.

Perhaps by Nov '08, James Carville's refrain of, "It's the economy, stupid," will be new again.

I hope that in some of the upcoming debates, the Dem candidates will be asked what they plan to do if our financial system is near collapse.